ROCK
Aaron Lee Tasjan likes exclamation points.
The self-titled album evolved into a trope over the years. A musician would make a record, then a few more records, then offer some new midcareer album bearing their name, the implication being, “This album is me in a way the others were not me.”
At 34, Aaron Lee Tasjan has had a few careers: He’s been a hotshot session guitarist, an addition to the reunited New York Dolls, a rootsy troubadour type. So the idea of naming his fifth album “Aaron Lee Tasjan” felt off to him. So he instead stuffed the idea with a bit of stylish excess, releasing “Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!” — the title serving almost as a conjuring. Say it three times and the real Aaron Lee Tasjan appears.
“My label and marketing people all said, ‘This is your self-titled album for sure,’ ” he says, laughing. “They told me I was singing about myself so directly in a way I hadn’t before. But something about that didn’t capture it for me. It didn’t fit with what I was trying to do with the record.”
It reminded me of the film “Beetlejuice.”
“I’ll take that because I’m a huge Michael Keaton fan,” he says. “I was thinking more of a cheer for a guy on a football team. A sports chant. This encouragement of unabashed selfness. For me it was like, ‘Here’s the most of me there’s ever been on a record. Take it or leave it, baby.’ ”
Those who appreciate thoughtfully written, tirelessly infectious guitar pop will take it. “Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!” — available in music retail and streaming services — offers much to love for those who appreciate hooky pop lined with shades of gray. The record is instantly engaging and resonates more with repeated plays, drawing from the Harry Nilsson, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Emitt Rhodes sphere, what Tasjan calls “the lexicon of great American and British music.”
The way a chorus turns on and off reminds of Lynne. When he sings “I got dressed in what’s left of my clean clothes,” Tasjan reminds of Kris Kristofferson’s line about digging around for “my cleanest dirty shirt.” His songs are also at times viably danceable.
A Delaware native who grew up in Ohio and has split his professional life between New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, Tasjan has become an eclectic songwriter and musician, who roots around in the shared soil of 20th-century American music, pulling it into the present with punchy arrangements and thoughtful lyrics.
Tasjan completed the record just prior to the pandemic, but it feels very much an album of the moment, emphasizing contrasts between interiors and exteriors: the self and the community and connectivity between the two.
“Up All Night,” an early single, captures that feeling. It’s a song balanced by celebration and caution, capturing a perspective of a touring musician, whose days and nights can be flipped, accompanied by good and bad decisions.
“I think as people, our nature is to want to feel some control,” he says. “But there’s also this feeling of letting go.”
Tasjan says he put it all on the lyric sheet, “this idea on the album of me personally expressing my queerness and how I relate to the world through that lens.”
Which means “Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!” hits on heavy subject matter — “systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, all these things” — dressed in three- and four-minute songs that remind of Nilsson or Big Star.
“It felt like an important time for me to do that,” Tasjan says. “To look in the mirror and have a reckoning and ask, ‘What’s the truth here?’ ”
So an album written and recorded prior to a tumultuous year defined by a global pandemic, a divisive national election and subsequent tempestuous happenings, finds itself in a position of being both provocative and comforting: a recognition of struggles and an invitation for connection amid those struggles.
“Feminine Walk” springs from a hypocrisy in our culture among those who seek to define cultural norms while railing against overbearing institutions. Tasjan says the song goes back to childhood. He was about 8, standing on a street corner with his father.
“This skateboarder dude, a guy who looked pretty cool, walked up to us and said to my dad, ‘Is that a boy or a girl?’ ” he says. “I was probably rocking a bowl type cut then — somewhere between Mark Hamill and Billy Jean King, that unisex thing. And now I reflect back and wonder what it was about me that compelled him to feel like he needed to ask. That’s when the phrase hit me: ‘feminine walk.’ I was just a kid walking down the street minding my own business.
“But that was the case with a lot of these songs. I took these personal experiences and tried to turn them into something in a song. And it became a celebration in a way. I felt I’d gotten to a place where I was no longer questioning it. I thought something that was uncomfortable from years ago turned into something different and beautiful.”